Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this opportunity to discuss online safety. It is long overdue. It is a topic of interest to all of us in this Chamber, every parent in the country, every teacher, adult, teen and child. I ask that the Government work in a collaborative manner on this issue. It is too important for partisan politics. The opinions and input from all in the Opposition must be given due regard. The Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport must be front and centre in this process, along with input from the Committee on Artificial Intelligence. Experts in the field can and must be invited to these committees to give testimony on online safety. Work is already under way, and only last week we engaged with the Children's Rights Alliance and CyberSafeKids on this issue at the committee.

We do not need to butt heads on this, and we will not, as long as the Government parties go into this process with an open mind. The Government parties cannot start this with a position that is already predetermined, a position that will lead to an outright online ban of any sort for youths, teens and children from the online platforms that can be deemed age-appropriate for them.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in particular general comment No. 25, sets out children's rights in the digital environment. These include the right to participate, the right to be protected from harm, the right not to be exploited for commercial gain and the right to access true and accurate information. Sinn Féin’s position is that children have a right to be online, and all of us in the House need to legislate to make it safe for them to do so. We have legislated to make the offline world safe for children. We can and should legislate to make the online world as safe for them as possible.

Big tech platforms will constantly say they are doing all they can to ensure online safety, but we all know that self-regulation is no regulation. We cannot have companies that generate massive profits for themselves, as is their right, but be free from appropriate oversight and governance. They must be responsible for what is on their platforms and for who can access their platforms.

We in Sinn Féin absolutely agree with the need for stringent age verification protocols on online platforms. Users should have to prove that they are the appropriate age to access platforms, not only to ensure that underage users are excluded, but also to prevent adults from accessing teen and pre-teen platforms. We want to see concrete proposals on what the verification methods will be to ensure they are viable. We would like to work collaboratively with all parties to make that happen.

Government Members have made statements about implementing outright social media bans for those aged under 16, following in Australia's footsteps. The Minister said the Government is not currently looking at implementing that type of ban. However, he has also stated, and did so again here today, that his officials are working with the Government Chief Information Officer and his office to look at practical technical solutions to age verification as part of the Government's digital wallet, which is being developed using MyGovID. However, MyGovID is not available to anybody under 16, so this would mean a total ban for anyone under 16. This needs to be teased out further. We would not agree with a complete ban on under-16s accessing appropriate social media platforms unless there was empirical data to back that up. As of now, with the conflicting data, we would see that type of ban as being a blunt tool, arbitrary and completely unfair. It would show that the Government has a complete lack of interest in looking for solutions that are fair to all.

We believe it would particularly disadvantage marginalised groups, such as migrant children, LGBTI+ children and others who do not have the opportunity to meet in person due to distance or a lack of appropriate forums to interact with each other in the offline world. This was a much-discussed topic in the lead-up to the Australian ban, but it seems to have been swept aside. Let us not repeat that here. In my opinion, it would contravene the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and, in particular, general comment No. 25.

When talking about online safety, the Irish public's data - every adult, teen and child’s online data - must be protected from the online platform providers. The Data Protection Commissioner has issued €3.26 billion in fines over the last five years to these companies but has only collected 0.6% of those fines. The tech bros must be high-fiving each other at the Government’s inaction on this. We need to look at what additional powers the Data Protection Commissioner needs to enforce those fines. Let us not turn it into another Apple tax situation.

We accept that a lot of work has been done here and at EU level to improve online safety. The online safety code places binding obligations on video-sharing platforms headquartered here, including YouTube, Meta, TikTok and so on, which is great. At the EU level, Article 28 of the Digital Services Act focuses specifically on protecting minors using a risk management and proportionate size approach, but there are still gaps in legislation that need to be addressed. We look forward to working with everybody in this House to make that happen. In particular, I look forward to working with the Minister on that.

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